Mobile devices differ from desktop computers in many ways. In general, they have smaller displays, more limited keypad controls, and less runtime memory. In Flash Lite development, these restrictions as well as general mobile device related considerations need to be taken into account.
Power consumption
Since mobile devices are wireless, they are not constantly connected to a power source but run on battery power. Therefore, try to keep your Flash Lite applications as efficient as possible.
For more information about how to manage the power consumption of mobile devices, see the Top 10 energy saving tips at Forum Nokia.
Network connection limitations
It is vital to keep in mind that mobile network connections may cost the mobile device user money in subscription fees. Therefore, it is recommended that you consider keeping the user informed when establishing connections from your application.
Mobile devices are also constantly moving with the user, which affects network availability. Data connections may suddenly be lost for shorter or longer periods, or be hindered by latency in the connection. A mobile application's function should not be reliant on having constant network access.
Basic Flash Lite rules of thumb
For key-based devices, optimize navigation to use the 5-way navigation keypad and implement additional features for the softkeys and the numeric keypad.
Optimize graphics for the smaller screen size. Bitmap images can be scaled down and compressed, vectors can be simplified. Reusing images is often useful. Avoid strokes.
Avoid complex animations and especially multiple simultaneous tweens. Avoid unnecessary alpha effects. For more tips, see Best Practices for Porting Flash Animation to Mobile Phones with Flash Lite at the Adobe Developer Connection.
Prefer using device fonts to reduce Flash Lite application file size.
Dynamic layout
If you are developing your Flash Lite application for devices with different screen orientations, create a dynamic layout that supports both the portrait and landscape modes. This way you ensure that the layout of your application matches the orientation supported by the device and that the layout responds to orientation changes in devices that support both modes.
Fixed-point arithmetic
Flash Lite does not support floating-point arithmetic. The accuracy of graphics rendering algorithms is limited to fixed-point arithmetic calculations. This means that line drawing, bazier curves, and such are not accurate to precision.
There are a lot of tips and insights to creating resource-effective and functional Flash Lite content. For more information about Flash Lite optimization, see section Flash Lite authoring and optimization tips.
For design considerations related to touch interaction, see section Basic touch UI design considerations.
There is no limit for the Flash Lite application file size, but the
memory available for the loaded Flash Lite content is limited, and if the
Flash Lite application requires more runtime memory than is available, the
application exits with an Error with content: 6 message.
The Flash Lite Player utilizes two kinds of memory heaps: static and dynamic. The size of these heaps depends on the Flash Lite version and the characteristics of the individual device. The whole static memory heap is assigned to the Flash Lite Player as it starts up and the dynamic memory heap is added on request if needed. The heap memory sizes for standalone and browser/wallpaper Flash Lite applications may differ.
You can find the heap memory sizes for the selected device from Adobe Device Central.
For more information about Flash Lite runtime memory and efficient memory management, see Memory management and optimizations in Flash Lite at the Adobe Developer Connection.